Search form

samurai

In "Kuroneko", a woman and her daughter-in-law are raped and murdered by a roving band of samurai. After their death the woman and her daughter-in-law swear their loyalty to the devil in order for them to be able to return to the world as cat-like ghosts and kill every samurai they possibly can. They then lure unsuspecting samurai to their home, deep in a bamboo forest, where the daughter-in-law proceeds to get the samurai drunk and seduce them. When the samurai are at their most vulnerable the mother and daughter-in-law reveal their true forms and kill them.

J-Horror is pretty well beaten into the ground by this point. With films like “Ringu”, “Ju-On” and “The Eye” spurring American remakes, sequels, sequels to the American remakes and blatant rip-offs, the genre is pretty much dead. Personally, I know if I have to review another film with that wet ghost girl with stringy hair I might just swear off horror films forever. But J-Horror wasn’t always about cell phones, video tapes or that goddamn ghost girl. There was a period of time when Japanese horror was something else entirely.

If you go poking through the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) on any given day, you're bound to find some really strange stuff. Aside from game demos, "HD remixes," and remakes of classic 2D games, it's hard to find a good game that isn't already being heavily promoted. Enter "Dishwasher: Dead Samurai," a very stylish and wacky beat-em-up from Ska Studios, which despite some flaws really stands out from the pack.

The name stands out on its own because it doesn't really make all that much sense. Shockingly, the story doesn't help: